On August 4 2006, Tony Wright, huntsman of the Exmoor Foxhounds and as honest and hard working a countryman as you could meet, became the first person to be convicted under the Hunting Act 2004. Today, two years after after his prosecution began, that conviction has been overturned.

While this is cause for celebration and has boosted the morale of the entire hunting community, it remains a scandal that such a law-abiding and decent man has had to live with this conviction and has had to fight a malicious private prosecution in order to clear his name.

The central problem with the case is exactly the same as the central problem with the Hunting Act itself: confusion. The Act took over 700 hours of parliamentary time, bringing the entire democratic process into disrepute, and the only thing on which the police, the judiciary, hunts and the general public are all agreed is that the resultant legislation is a mess: divisive, illiberal; hard to interpret; and of no discernible benefit to either people or animals.

During the initial trial at Barnstaple magistrates court in the summer of 2006, the facts seemed simple: Tony thought he had been hunting within the exemptions set out within the Act; that is to say, he had used two hounds to flush a fox which was then shot dead as soon as possible by a competent person. What followed was a knotty legal problem where the definition of "flushing" was called into question: how far can a fox move from cover before "flushing" becomes "hunting"? The judiciary was unsure, meaning that even if Tony had been armed with a tape measure that day, it wouldn't have helped him. He was acting within the law as he understood it. The trouble is the law could not be understood, leaving Tony, who had every intention of staying within the law, outside it.

At Exeter crown court on Friday November 30, Judge Cottle agreed that the Hunting Act is confusing, and that he had "no doubt that he [Tony] and the master of the hunt genuinely wished to comply with the act ... he reasonably believed, perhaps optimistically, that he had put in place the safeguard that would ensure compliance with the act."

I think the "optimism" to which Judge Cottle refers is that Tony tried to make sense of the act. As he said: "We observe at the outset that the experience of this case has led us to the conclusion that the relevant law is far from simple to interpret or to apply ... The result is an unhappy state of affairs which leaves all those involved in a position of uncertainty."

Looking at the bigger picture, it is clear that it is not just the foxes of Exmoor that need to be despatched, but the Hunting Act itself. Gordon Brown could go some way to erasing the futility of those 700 parliamentary hours by repealing the Act now. He would be doing a service to the people and wildlife of this country.